Recently, Intel, which has just announced the establishment of fabs in Ohio and Germany, announced that its CEO Kissinger will visit Taiwan for the second time. According to the Economic Daily, in addition to visiting TSMC, Kissinger also personally went down to "grab the material" and hoped to provide abfrons through visiting Xinxing Electronics.
At present, although the consumer electronics market is weak, but 5G, automatic driving, cloud computing and artificial intelligence and other applications are still improving, the global demand for chips is still high, driving chip packaging demand has also doubled, and the packaging substrate as an important material for chip packaging has naturally become the focus of the mad rush.
Although the market is still hot, the shortage problem has long existed, and the continuous strong demand for chips has widened its gap, even in 2022. At the same time, the expansion of the packaging substrate Asia Sanxiong is still continuing.
In Japan, the "top match" supply chain has the exclusive advantage
Although The market share of IC sales in Japan has fallen from 49% in the 1990s to 6% in 2021 in the past 30 years, its position in the field of semiconductor materials and equipment is still unquestionable. Whether it is ABN 100's ABF, Showa Materials' Core materials, or Oxtail Motors and Viameko Machinery's equipment, this "top-of-the-line" substrate material and related equipment supply chain give Japan its exclusive advantage in the field of packaging substrates.
As the pioneer of packaging substrates, Japan ranks among the top in the world in terms of technological strength and controls the most lucrative CPU carrier board. In the 1990s, in the early stages of the development of organic packaging substrates, Japan was at the forefront, occupying the vast majority of the market for IC packaging substrates. By 2004, the global semiconductor industry ushered in a turning point in the development of flip chip packaging, FC packaging substrates began to develop rapidly, Japanese companies also quickly took the opportunity to turn to higher-order FC BGA packaging substrates, and occupied more than half of the FC packaging substrates (mainly referring to FC-BGA, FC-PGA, FC-LGA and other packaging substrates).
In the face of such a hot market for packaging substrates at present, in addition to the two top suppliers of IBIDEN and Shin Kong Electric Industry, letterpress printing and Kyocera, which have mass production technology for FC packaging substrates, have also joined the expansion team.
IbidEN
In April 2021, Yomitsu Electric announced that in order to respond to strong customer demand, it plans to invest 180 billion yen in its Kawama business site (Kawama-cho, Ogaki City, Gifu Prefecture) to increase production of high-performance IC packaging substrates. The above-mentioned production increase project is expected to be completed and mass production in FY 2023. In addition, It has also expanded its production lines at other plants in Ogaki City.
New optoelectronic worker
In October 2021, The New Optoelectronics announced that it will spend 158 billion yen to expand the production capacity of semiconductor parts such as cladding substrates. It is understood that the new optoelectronic workers plan to invest a total of 140 billion yen in the period of 2022-2025 to increase the production of cladding substrates, in addition to expanding the production capacity of the More Northern Plant and the Wakaho Plant, it will also build a new cladding substrate plant in Chikuma City, Nagano Prefecture, thereby increasing the laminate substrate production capacity by about 50% compared with the current one.
Japan Toppan Printing Co., Ltd.
In July 2021, Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun reported that Letterpress Printing will invest 11.2 billion yen to introduce a new semiconductor packaging substrate production line for its Niigata plant (Shibata City, Niigata Prefecture), which is scheduled to start operations in 2022.
Kyocera
In November 2021, Kyocera President Hideo Tanimoto revealed at an earnings briefing that he plans to build a new IC substrate plant in Vietnam. Hideo Tanimoto said that kyocera Vietnam's factory has secured land for four new factory buildings.
South Korea, increasing production under the control of international competitiveness
Compared with Japan, South Korea first began to produce T-BGA and PBGA packaging substrates in Samsung Electric's Busan plant in 1997, and then LG Electronics also began to invest in packaging substrate production. In 2000-2003 during the rapid development of the world's packaging substrates, benefiting from the opportunity of the mobile phone market, South Korea has gradually become the main battlefield of the IC market, the packaging substrate industry has also taken advantage of the rise, 2002-2004 The packaging substrates produced by South Korea accounted for 25-27%, 15-17% and 12-14% of the world rigid packaging substrate market, respectively, and gradually formed a "three-legged standing" situation with the mainland Taiwan and Japan.
Thanks to the rapid development of South Korea's semiconductor and consumer electronics industries in recent years, PCB and chip packaging naturally play a vital role in this. Recently, Chul-dong Jung, president of the Korea Printed Circuit Board Association and CEO of LGInnotek, also stressed the importance of improving the international competitiveness of The Korean semiconductor packaging substrate industry. It is reported that a number of major Korean carrier board manufacturers, including SEMCO (Samsung Motor), LG Innotek (LG Electronics), Simmtech, Daeduck (Daeduk Electronics), etc., announced plans to expand production.
Samsung motor
Samsung Motor, as an affiliate of South Korea's Samsung Electronics, is the largest packaging substrate manufacturer in South Korea, and at the beginning of this year, it was reported that Samsung Motor will supply FC-BGA packaging substrates for Apple's M1 chip.
In December 2021, Samsung Electric decided to invest about KRW 1.1 trillion in the construction of FC-BGA substrate facilities and infrastructure at its plant in Tayon Province, Vietnam, which will begin mass production in the second half of 2023. On February 17 this year, the Vietnamese government approved Samsung Electric's investment plan to set up a new production line at an existing plant in Thau Inu province, near Hanoi. On February 28, Samsung Electric also announced that it will invest an additional 320 billion won in the plant to expand the production of FC-BGA substrates.
· LG Innotek
In February, LG Innotek officially entered the high-end semiconductor board market, announcing that it would spend 413 billion won to manufacture flip chip ball grid arrays (FCs-BGA), which will be used by April 2024.
Image source: businesskorea
· Simmtech
In August 2021, SimmTech Co Ltd, through its Malaysian subsidiary Sustio Sdn Bhd (Sustio), will invest RM508 million (approximately US$120 million) to establish its first semiconductor printed circuit board (PCB) and packaging substrate manufacturing plant in Southeast Asia at the Batu Kawan Industrial Park in Penang. Once fully launched, penang (the plant) will account for 20% of Simtech Group's current combined capacity in South Korea, China and Japan.
In addition to building a new plant in Malaysia, SimmTech is also expanding its plant in Cheongju, South Korea, which mainly produces high value-added semiconductor substrates such as FC-CSP (Flip Chip Package) and SiP (System Package).
Daitoku Electronics
In December 2021, Daitoku electronics said it plans to invest 400 billion won (about 2.15 billion yuan) in additional investments in the FC-BGA next year. Between the surge in demand for semiconductors in recent years, Daitoku Electronics has been expanding FC-BGA. In July 2020, after Investing KRW 90 billion in the FC-BGA business, Daitoku Electronics announced that it will increase its production capacity by an additional KRW 70 billion to build a new plant in Ansan.
It is understood that Dade Electronics completed the new FC-BGA plant in August 2021 and began product shipments. The FC-BGA Line 1, which has been established with an investment of about 90 billion won, has been started, the capital investment related to the expansion of line 2 has been completed, and investment in the expansion of line 3 and line 4 will be carried out in 2022.
Taiwan and the mainland go hand in hand
China's packaging substrate industry will be divided into two parts, one part is Taiwan, which developed at about the same time as South Korea, and the other part is the Chinese mainland, which is still in the catch-up period.
First of all, Taiwan, around 1998, through the introduction of technology from the United States, Japan, etc., Taiwan quickly entered the field of packaging substrates, in 2004 Taiwan manufacturers have accounted for 64% of the world's entire PBGA packaging substrate market demand. Driven by market demand, Xinxing Electronics, South Asia Circuit, Jingshuo Technology, etc. have successively expanded production of ABF.
Xinxing Electronics
Shin Hing Electronics will raise its capital expenditure in 2022 to NT$35.858 billion, and 80%-85% of the capital expenditure will be used for IC carrier board expansion, of which 70% will be used to expand the ABF carrier board production capacity in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and 30% will be used to upgrade the BT substrate production line in Suzhou, China. The production capacity of high-end FCCSP BT substrates for processing mobile phone SoCs will continue to remain in Taiwan.
In addition, sources revealed that its new factory in Yangmei, Taiwan, mainly to meet intel's needs, according to Intel's requirements, Xinxing Electronics plans to start small-scale production from the first quarter of 2022, and fully put into production in the first half of 2023.
South Asian circuit
South Asia Circuit is also continuing to expand abaf carrier board production capacity. According to the United News Network, Nandian pointed out that it will continue to expand the production capacity of high-end IC carrier boards and complete the capacity expansion as scheduled. It is understood that in February this year, south Asia Electronic Materials (Kunshan) Co., Ltd.'s south Asian circuit board high-end IC carrier board new project added a total investment of 213 million US dollars, the new registered capital of 71 million US dollars. The project will be used to expand the high-precision circuit board, after the completion of the annual output of netcom high-precision circuit boards can be increased from 25.97 million pieces to 50.75 million pieces, the annual output of circuit board area will be doubled to 109,000 square meters.
Jingshuo Technology
In October 2021, Jingshuo Technology announced that it would invest another NT$768 million to expand the production of ABF carrier boards, and open production capacity and contribute revenue as soon as the second half of 2022. In 2021, Jingshuo Technology has expanded the level of ABF carrier board by 30%, mainly in the Xinfeng factory area, and it is estimated to expand by another 30%-40% in 2022, and from mid-2022 to 2023, the expanded base will be in the Yangmei factory purchased from Shenghua.
Compared with Taiwan, the packaging substrate industry in mainland China started late, and it was not until 2002 that it achieved the first company to mass-produce BGA carrier boards. However, in recent years, with the development of the Chinese mainland semiconductor industry, the packaging substrate industry has gradually risen. According to Prismark's forecast, from 2020 to 2025, the compound annual growth rate of China's packaging substrate output value is about 12.9%, which is significantly higher than that of other regions, and the global packaging substrate industry is moving towards Chinese mainland.
Zhongjing Electronics
On February 28 this year, Zhongjing Electronics announced that it intends to use its own funds and self-raised funds of RMB 1.5 billion for the construction of the Integrated Circuit (IC) Packaging Substrate Industry Project in Zhuhai. The project mainly focuses on the production of FC-CSP and WB-CSP application products, and carries out the technical development of FC-BGA application products.
Deep South Circuit
Shennan Circuit currently has 2 packaging substrate factories in Shenzhen and 1 packaging substrate factory in Wuxi. Among them, the Wuxi project is expected to be put into production in the fourth quarter of 2022.
In June 2021, Shennan Circuit announced that it intends to use its own funds and self-raised funds of 6 billion yuan for the construction of the Guangzhou packaging substrate production base project, and the overall production capacity of the project is expected to be about 200 million FC-BGA, 3 million panelRF/FC-CSP and other organic packaging substrates. In March this year, Shennan Circuit increased its capital again, and after the completion of the capital increase, the registered capital of Guangzhou Guangxin was 500 million yuan.
Xingsen Technology
On February 8, Xingsen Technology announced that it intends to invest about 6 billion yuan to build a production and R&D base project for FCBGA packaging substrates in Guangzhou. The project plans to build an intelligent factory of FCBGA packaging substrates with a monthly production capacity of 20 million units, which will be built in two phases, with a production capacity of 10 million units per month in the first phase, which is expected to reach production in 2025 and a production capacity of 10 million units per month in the second phase, and is expected to reach production by the end of 2027. Xingsen Technology said it will continue to expand its investment in FC-BGA in the future.
Write at the end
From the above point of view, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have all moved towards high-end packaging substrates, especially Taiwan has opened a wave of ABF expansion. In contrast, although the development of Chinese mainland is relatively slow, the semiconductor market is in a stage of rapid growth. SIA has said that if Chinese mainland semiconductor development continues to be strong (maintaining a compound annual growth rate of 30% over the next three years) and assumes that the growth rate of the industry in other countries remains unchanged, the annual revenue of the Chinese mainland semiconductor industry may reach $116 billion by 2024, exceeding the global market share of 17.4%.
The strong development momentum, coupled with the rapid growth of leading packaging and testing enterprises such as Changdian Technology, Tongfu Microelectric, Huatian Technology, etc., will surely accelerate the localization process of packaging materials.
Article source: The content is original by the official account Semiconductor Industry Observation (ID: icbank), author: Gong Jiajia.